Notes for Quantum Mechanics

Richard Seto Updated for 2005 Date[]

82005, 10, 10, 17, 21, 54.6465056< OK - lets move on to bra's and ket's. This is a set of notes following the book starting in chapter 3. I will use a slightly different notation so I will rewrite the formulas in my notation and also give some explanations. When I put a (Liboff 3.1) next to a formula - it is the same formula as in the book, written perhaps a different way.

Lecture 5

Orange Juice - States, Bras, Kets and Operators

The first thing I am going to do is to define a state. This can be a state of anything. As an example lets use drinks in a refrigerator. We are thirsty so we go to the refrigerator for a drink. The refrigerator is our universe. Lets imagine that the refrigerator has one drink in it, a drink named orange-juice. orange-juice has a color which is orange - that has a wavelength of 590 nm (nanometers). Lets assume there is only one orange-juice in the whole universe. We will denote the state of the drinks in the refrigerator as orange-juice\. At the moment the word "orange-juice" inside the \ is just a label. The thing orange-juice\ is called a ket. This is unlike anything you have seen before. At the moment it is not a function of anything. Its just a thing which uniquely signifies the drink in the refrigerator. Now let us define an operator which acts ` on this state and pulls out the name. We will call the operator Name. Operators will have the hat on top of it. This is not a number, its not a function - its an operator. It doesn't mean anything until it acts on something. Hence ` Name orange-juice\ = orange-juiceorange-juice\ . (Libioff 3.1) ` This is exactly eqn 3.1 in the book. So when we act on the ket orange-juice\ , with the operator Name, it pulls out "orange-juice" out in front of the ket on the RHS. So then how do we know anything about the ket orange-juice\? Well, ` we act on it with the operator Name and it spits out "orange-juice" out in front. We can define another operator ` Wavelength which will give orange-juice\' s color as a wavelength in nm - hence ` Wavelengthorange-juice\ = 590orange-juice\ . ` ` By the way orange-juice\ is special kind of ket called an eigenket or eigenstate of Name and Wavelength meaning orange-juice\ has a unique name and wavelength. "orange-juice" and 590 are called the eigenvalues. So for example we ` can say orange-juice\ is an eigenket of Wavelength with eigenvalue 590.

OK now lets assume that there is another kind of drink - called grape-juice\. grape-juice\ is violet which has a ` wavelength 400 nm. So grape-juice\ is an eigenket of Wavelength with eigenvalue 400. Now let us suppose we are in the mood for a strange drink which is a mixture of orange-juice and grape-juice and lets call it orange-grape-juice. Is ` orange-grape-juice\ an eigenket of Wavelength? The operator can only pull out one value, so what is the eigenvalue? Its is NOT (400+590)/2 since wavelengths don't add up like that. Its a mixture of 400 and 590 nm. So this means that there is
Essential Mathematica for Students of Science James J. Kelly, 1998

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not a single number which can signify the wavelength. We say that orange-grape-juice\ is NOT an eigenket of ` Wavelength. So what do we do? Well maybe you can express orange-grape-juice\ as some linear combination of orange-juice\ and grape-juice\. We can - as follows ` ` Wavelengthorange-grape-juice\= Wavelength( 1! orange-juice\+ 1! grape-juice\)= !!! !!! ` 1! (Wavelengthorange-juice\+ !!! 2
2 2 2

I will explain the

orange-grape-juice\= 1! orange-juice\+ 1! grape-juice\ !!! !!! 1! , !!! 2

2 2

later. (you might guess it has something to do with normalization) So now

You can see, that you cannot write this as some number times orange-grape-juice\, which is the reason it is not an eigenket. By the way though, later we will find that there is something like (400+590)/2 which we will call the expectation ` value of the operator Wavelength - which is basically the average - but we will get to that later.
2

` Wavelengthgrape-juice\)=590 1 orange-juice\+400 1! grape-juice\ !!!! !!!

So Xorange-juice orange-juice\=1, since orange-juice\ is pure orange-juice. Now looking ahead - we will always want to square these things to get something that we can interpret as human beings. (before squaring - there are things like imaginary numbers and phases which are important - but we cannot physically picture it in our minds) So What happens is we "hit" (I will use this word) orange-grape-juice\ with Xorange-juice ? Well we can do it Xorange-juiceorange-grape-juice\= Xorange - juice ( 1! orange-juice\+ 1! grape-juice\)= !!! !!!
2 2

Now I have to tell you about something similar to orange-juice\, that is Xorange-juice. Notice that the "X" and the "" are switched around. Now Xorange-juice is called the "dual" of orange-juice\ and is called a "bra". How can we think about it? Imagine that you have a little machine that filters the juice and totals up how much of a particular juice there is in a ket. So Xorange-juice operates on a ket (Yes - sometimes it can be thought of as an operator) and tell you how much orange-juice there is in orange-juice\. Hitting a ket with a bra is a nice thing to do because that combination X\ is now not a ket, its a function - something that we can all relate to. Often it is just a number - i..e. the fraction of orange-juice in orange-juice\
2

You notice that if you associate orange, grape, and strawberry juices with the x, y, and z axis, that there is an analogy here. Any vector in 3 dimensional space can be written as a combination of x, y, and z unit vectors. HOWEVER as we talk about drinks in the refrigerator, are we thinking about the ordinary 3-space of x, y, and z? Clearly not. Juice-space is some funny new space. It is one example of something called a Hilbert space. This is a powerful new concept, which is at the foundation of quantum mechanics. This is where we can introduce into QM - spaces which have no classical 1 counterpart - like spin particles.

newjuice\= Aorange-juice\+ Bgrape-juice\+Cstrawberry-juice\ where A, B, and C are constants. (you will learn later that A2 + B2 + C2 = 1L

Now let us imagine that there are only 3 kinds of juices in the world -a new one which we will call strawberry-juice, which is red with a wavelength of 650 nm, and orange-juice and grape-juice. Then ANY kind of juice you could ever imagine could be written as a linear combination of orange-juice\, grape-juice\ and strawberry-juice\. We say that these three juices span the space of juices - or that they form a complete set. orange-juice\, grape-juice\ and strawberry-juice\ are basis "vectors" that span juice-space. This is a very important fact - for the following reason. Suppose someone came to you and said that they had made a special juice for you. Can you guess what it is? Well since orange, grape, and strawberry juices span juice space the answer MUST be something like

Xorange-juice orange - juice\ 2 =1

Essential Mathematica for Students of Science

James J. Kelly, 1998

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Now if we square this we get

Now our notation of putting the name of the juice is a little awkward. Lets change it to make it clearer. Instead of putting the name of the juice inside the |\, lets just put the wavelength inside the |\ so then orange-grape-juice\ =590\ , grape-juice\ =400\ and strawberry-juice\ =650\. This notation is nice because then ` ` Wavelength|590\=590590\ and Wavelength ai \ = ai ai \ from before I have any - juice\ = c1 orange - juice\ + c2 grape - juice\ + c3 strawberry - juice\ = ci ai \ Now we can find the ci ' s by hitting the this eqn from the left by Xa j . Lets do this slowly any - juice\ = ci ai \ so then Xa j any-juice\= Xa j ci ai \ = ci Xa j ai \ = ci dij = c j

Xal an \ = dln (4.80).

I have made two assumptions here. First I assumed that Xorange-juice orange - juice\=1. This is the normalization condition. bra's and kets which are used as basis vectors should be normalized to 1. Otherwise its a pain. It makes no sense for a drink to be 140% orange-juice. I have also assumed that Xgrape-juice orange - juice\=0. Note that there is no square here. This makes sense because there is no grape-juice in orange-juice. We say that orange - juice\ and grape - juice\ are orthogonal to each other. Notice how closely we stick to the language of 3 space - but we are NOT in 3 space - we are in juice-space and we are just borrowing the language. Now lets let ai \ stand for any of the 3 basis vectors Hor juicesL. Then we can write these conditions compactly as

1! (Xorange - juiceorange-juice\+ Xorange-juicegrape-juice\)= 1! H1 + 0L = 1! !!! !!! !!!

2 2 2 1 which 2

makes sense. Half of the juice in orange-grape-juice is orange-juice.

c j= Xa j any-juice\

and we have solved for c j.

Now lets plug c j back into the expansion for any-juice. any - juice\ = ci ai \= ai \Xai any-juice\

` If we examine this carefully we see that the combination ai \Xai acts like an identity operator which I will call 1. (the hat reminds us that this is an operator since it operates on the ket any-juice\. So ` ai \Xai =1 where I have assumed Xany - juice ai \ Xai any - juice\ = Xai any - juice\ 2 . This then means that the ci ' s are normalized such that ci 2 =1. This is why I have put in the 1! above. !!! 2 Expectation values. 1 = Xany - juice any - juice\ = Xany - juice ai \ Xai any - juice\ = X any - juice ai \ Xai any - juice\ == ci 2 Xai any - juice\ 2 We would like the quantity Xany-juice|any-juice\ to equal 1 since |any-juice\ is made up of 100% any-juice. So

Essential Mathematica for Students of Science

Now above I told you that there is something we can find about the mixture orange-grape-juice\ even though it wasn't an

James J. Kelly, 1998

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` eigenket of Wavelength. Its sort of an average and we call it the expectation value defined as follows: ` ` XA\=Xany-juiceAany-juice\ ` So lets do this for the operator Wavelength. and the ket orange-grape-juice\ ` ` 1 1 Xorange-juiceWavelengthorange-juice\+ Xorange-juiceWavelengthgrape-juice\+ 2 ` 2` 1 Wavelengthorange-juice\+ Xgrape-juiceWavelengthgrape-juice\= 2
2 2 2 2 1 400 Xgrape-juicegrape-juice\= (590+400)/2 = 495 2

` ` XWavelength\=Xorange-grape-juiceWavelengthorange-grape-juice\ = ` ( 1! Xorange-juice+ 1! Xgrape-juice) Wavelength( 1! orange-juice\+ 1! grape-juice\)= !!! !!! !!! !!!
2 2

remembering that we can write orange-grape-juice\= 1! orange-juice\+ 1! grape-juice\ !!! !!!

1 1 1 590 Xorange-juiceorange-juice\+ 400 Xorange-juicegrape-juice\+ 590 Xgrape-juiceorange-juice\+ 2 2 2

1 Xgrape-juice 2

as one might have expected

Something a little more real - light - continuous states

Now we want to make a jump. Let us drop the idea of juice and start thinking instead about light itself. We are going to let |a\ stand for some light coming from a lamp or something. We can then write |a\= ci ai \ where the ai \ stand for a particular wavelength light with wavelength ai . For the moment you can just think that there is orange, violet and red if you like. This analogy is pretty good since now we are really thinking about light which IS a wave. Be careful though, because this is really still an analogy. I would also ` ` like to use some arbitrary operator A to stand for Wavelength. ` Before moving on let me collect the formulas I now have. Remember the ai \ are eigenkets of Wavelength with eigenvalues ai and |a\ is some arbitrary ket in the space. ` A ai \ = ai ai \ Xal an \ = dln ` ai \Xai =1 c j= Xa j a\ ci 2 =1 a\ = ci ai \

Now a second jump. Really there are not just 3 wavelengths of light, but an infinite number since the wavelength spectrum is continuous. So the index i should run to infinity. What do we do? Well the summation just becomes an integral and the ai ' s have to a continuous set of things. Lets change from ai to l where now l is a continuous variable. Also ` ` instead of A lets write . So now we will rewrite the formulas using these continuous wavelengths. ` |l\=l|l\ Xl'|l\= d(l'-l) this is the dirac delta function, d(l'-l) =0 if l'l etc - see p 74 in your book. Section 3.2 ` dl l\ Xl =1

Essential Mathematica for Students of Science

James J. Kelly, 1998

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c(l)=Xl a\ so a\ = dl l\Xl a\ So lets talk about these for a minute. Lets imagine that a\ is light from the sun, which has all sorts of wavelengths in it. We can write it as a\ = dl cHlL l\ where c(l)=Xl a\ tells us how much of a particular wavelength l there is in the sun. Now a few interesting points. We are going to look at some operators which are Hermitian operators. The nice thing is that observably like position, momentum, energy... are all represented by hermitian operators. Once you have a hermitian operator, then the eigenkets of a hermitian operator make a good set of basis eigenkets which will span the relevant space. This is one of the reasons that finding the correct Hamiltonian or energy operator is important. We are now going to leave the comfortable analogy of wavelengths and start thinking much more abstractly. First let us learn some of the math associated with Hilbert spaces, and then we will get to Quantum Mechanics for real. dl' cHl'L 2 =1.

a\ = dl cHlL l\

Essential Mathematica for Students of Science

James J. Kelly, 1998